The virus attacks the support cells for your olfactory system, but not the system itself. Once the disease is gone, those cells slowly replenish and you regain your sense of smell.
570 karma · joined December 13, 2011
Besides being known as deadly to parrots, I think studies (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28913736/) are starting to reveal that there are risks with PTFE and PFOA that need more research.
I try not to be alarmist about chemicals and am generally in favor of scientific progress, but this chemical (similarly to PCBs) seems like one of those "wonder materials" that's great for specific applications that turns out to be terrible for life and the environment as soon as people sit down and actually look at the effects over a long period of time.
... or die in large enough numbers. I am not willing to sacrifice my family and friends so people can make more money.
Instead of reopening, how about we restructure our society in a way that allows people to stay safe until we have a vaccine?
If you're interested in attending future !!Cons, sign up for our mailing list (on our website) and we'll let you know when tickets go on sale.
They're on the Confreaks youtube channel, and we'll release individual talk videos a few weeks from now.
This is our 7th year and our first time running it virtually. Happy to answer any questions about the conference. We’ll also be publishing our notes about how we ran a virtual conference afterward.
Hope you enjoy!
I also would plug !!Con (bangbangcon.com) and StarCon (starcon.io) as conferences specifically about the joy and excitement of computing. Those might be a good source of inspiration for you. (Full disclosure: I help organize !!Con).
I think one of the important things is to find people who do joyful things with computers and spend time with them, or at least follow their work.
We did a homebirth (with a registered midwife) and it was an amazing experience. We found a midwife who listened to us, went to eight weeks of birth classes, and delivered a healthy baby at 41+6. The birth was an enjoyable experience and felt very natural.
The cost was much less than we would have paid in a hospital and also was agreed on upfront. We did end up having a complication, but since the midwife had medical training she was immediately able to recognize what was going on and transfer us to the hospital.
I guess I'm telling this story because there are ways of having babies in a safe and healthy way not in the hospital - but you have to find the right people and do your research. Our midwife went to an ivy league midwifery school and had a license. If you're like me and thinking about having a baby someday, but you don't want to deliver in a hospital, look into birthing centers and registered midwifes. If you do want to deliver in a hospital - go for it!
To attempt to excuse myself, it's not obvious on mobile that the book is included in the repo.
Cheers, then, I'll open a PR.
Sorry for the small novel :) I haven't really written about this stuff at length on the internet before so it's all just kinda coming out.
> What is it like
The services (sunday morning, an hour long) which are generally made up of a sermon, some singing, and some community meeting. These range from academic to somewhat spiritual (with no expectations) and usually have a theme or lesson.
The community functions much like you would think a religious community would: they support each other, they volunteer for events, they show up at potlucks and other social events. I've enjoyed getting to know people outside of my age range (from young kids to very old folks), which just doesn't happen at my tech job.
> How did you become involved
My partner started attending and dragged me kicking and screaming to the first few services :) Not really, but I definitely was looking for reasons to not go. But it turns out they were really friendly and (as I mentioned) there was no pressure to have any specific spiritual belief. Once I realized that it was a great group to explore my own thoughts on religion and a group of people to belong to who would care for me if I was in trouble (because I would do the same for them), I started enjoying going.
> What kind of events do they organize
Beyond Sunday services, the congregations I've been a part of have had young adult (18-35) groups that meet regularly, groups for young families, groups for seniors, etc. At a previous congregation I took a fascinating class led by the minister that focused on being able to better define my own belief system about the world.
> How do they practice their religion
Generally the "religion" is the idea that all humans and the earth are worthy of our love and attention. So we do things like organize activism, take care of each other, clean up our environment, etc. And also recognize that all of us are growing and learning in our own ways, so some of the practice is also discovering our own beliefs.
UU is covenantal. That means that we have an agreement with the other members of our congregation to treat each other well, and people who break that covenant are held accountable by the other members of the community. Here's an example from the Berkeley church[1] (which I have not attended, but I like it).
UU is not creedal. The ministers don't tell you what to believe. They are there to help you on your way to finding your own creedo - your own system of belief about the world.
> What are your biggest criticisms or complaints
Some congregations can be very "hippy", which I don't mind but I know it's a turn-off for some people. Fortunately they're generally super respectful of other belief systems.
One thing that I liked at the beginning was the fact that UU isn't evangelical. People are supposed to find UU on their own and join if it's something that interests them. But now I think this makes UUs timid to bring it up, and I really do think that it would be great to tell more people about it. There's a big difference between being pushy and just talking religion - and I think we need more of the latter.
Also the credentialing process for ministers is very long and we have a lot of student loans now (but most people won't have that problem!)
> It sounds like UU's are more loosely organized
UU churches are democratic, and every church sends delegates to a big gathering once a year to vote on things. This means that there's no top-down hierarchy, no pope to tell everyone how to run things. It's also slower and not perfect, but generally I think people like it. There's a president of the religion, but they're mostly just to organize and run things, not set beliefs.
Every organization of a certain size has its bad actors, and UU is no exception. But the few cases I've heard about have been handled well and the public informed.
Certainly if the crusades started up again, I'd be on the streets protesting against them with my UU friends!
Hopefully that helps. I've been meaning to write a blog post or something about this in a better form than an HN comment, maybe this is a good starting point for that.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19977295 [1] https://uucb.org/covenant-of-right-relations/
UUs have seven principles (https://www.uua.org/beliefs/what-we-believe/principles) but none of them require any sort of supernatural belief. Coming from an anti-theist background they were all already things I agreed with. Some people say that you can believe in anything and be a UU, which isn't quite true - any belief system that sees others as "less than", for example, would be incompatible.
As for who does the talking, most congregations have a trained minister (like my partner) who leads most services. They talk on a variety of topics, but mostly about community, justice, activism, and lessons from other religions.
Hope this helps!
Er, that said, I think it's good to do archives for useful emails like yours. Mine is just memes which go stale pretty quickly :)
I also sometimes send out essays about things I've been thinking about. My last email had about 1k words about millennials (I am one, ftr) and what the media was saying about my generation.
It's not for everyone but that's something I enjoy about the email newsletter medium - you can always unsubscribe.
I will say that their free tier (I think it's 10k emails per month?) is way more than enough for my use case. I'm not affiliated with mailchimp.